Project Details
Projekt
Morphosyntax and word order in majority English across heritage speakers
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Shanley Allen
Subject Area
General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Term
from 2018 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 313607803
In this project, we investigate novel grammatical patterns in the majority English productions of heritage speakers of German, Greek, Russian, and Turkish living in the U.S. We focus on the use of noncanonical morphosyntax and word order, highlighting structures relevant to internal interfaces and external interfaces. In the domain of morphosyntax, we explore grammatical morphology (internal interface between syntax and morphology) and referent introduction (external interface between syntax and information structure). In the domain of word order, we explore verb placement with respect to the direct object (internal interface between syntax and morphology) and the fronting of arguments to the left periphery of the clause (external interface between syntax and information structure). Consistent with RUEG’s overarching approach, we assess the impact of both register (informal vs. formal; spoken vs. written) and age (child, adolescent, adult). We further attempt to tease apart whether novel patterns are due to cross-linguistic influence from a particular heritage language, or rather are due to language contact in general, by performing three types of comparisons in collaboration with other RUEG projects: a comparison of patterns in majority English across the four heritage groups (German, Greek, Russian, Turkish), a comparison of patterns between majority English and majority German for the same heritage populations (Greek, Russian, Turkish), and a comparison of patterns in majority English with the corresponding patterns in each of the heritage languages. For Russian heritage speakers, we additionally compare the non-canonical use of word order vs. prosody to convey information structure, in cooperation with P7. To the extent possible, we also compare our results with parallel results from the literature on L2 English as spoken by L1 speakers of German, Greek, Russian, and Turkish. In sum, our results will contribute to our understanding of the contact-linguistic status of non-canonical patterns in the majority English of heritage speakers, the sources of their development, and their position within speakers’ broader repertoires of languages and registers.
DFG Programme
Research Units
